Salesman Tom is about to hit the road for a monthlong journey to visit customers and sales prospects, a trip that will take him to 50 destinations across the United States. Tom needs to optimize the trip by three priorities. He must first maximize the time he spends with each client. Second, he must complete the trip in the shortest possible distance. Finally, he needs to do it at the lowest possible cost. This variation on the classic “traveling salesman problem” would take one of today’s off-the-shelf computer servers decades to solve definitively, if it could solve the problem at all. A quantum computer could knock it off in seconds. Route optimization is one of the sweet spots of this technology, but so are modeling chemical compounds, spotting patterns in DNA sequences, optimizing financial portfolios and forecasting weather. Fleets of autonomous vehicles will be managed far more safely and efficiently by quantum computers than by traditional ones. The technology could revolutionize risk analysis in the insurance industry. In short, the more complex the problem and the greater the number of variables involved, the better #quantumcomputing looks. That’s one reason the field has acquired an almost mythical aura over the more than 35 years that scientists have pursued it. Now, there’s mounting evidence that quantum computing is tantalizingly close to reality. Investment capital is flowing into the market, and some quantum computer developers are talking about showing prototypes of supercomputer-grade systems as soon as next year. Quantum startup #IonQ Inc. said last month that it has raised $22 million toward its goal of producing general-purpose quantum processors within 12 months. It’s the second startup in this field to score significant funding this year. #Rigetti Computing Inc. said in March that it has raised $64 million and expects to demonstrate a machine next year that will outperform the world’s largest supercomputers in some tasks. #IBM Corp. put a #quantumprocessor on its #publiccloud in March and invited researchers to experiment with it. The move closely followed an announcement by #DWave Systems Inc. that it sold a giant quantum machine to an unspecified customer for $15 million. And in July, a report said #Google Inc. also plans to offer researchers access to its new quantum computing technology via the cloud. The pace of activity this year is all the more remarkable given that, as recently as three years ago, experts were debating whether quantum computers could ever even be built. The consensus now is that it’s just a matter of time, and not that much time either. “The major obstacles toward coherent, capable systems are pretty much worked out,” said Andrew Bestwick, director of engineering at Rigetti. “The major challenges now are how to take something that’s been demonstrated on small systems and implement it in a highly scalable form.” That could also open up a lucrative new market. Currently it’s small, but it’s growing quickly. Market Research Future expects quantum computer sales to surge 24 percent annually to nearly $2.5 billion in 2022. Market Research Media Ltd. is even more optimistic, forecasting $5 billion in annual sales in 2020. Good timing The timing couldn’t be better. Moore’s Law, the doubling of the number of transistors on a square inch of silicon every two years, has propelled the computer industry for more than 50 years, but it appears to be finally running out of steam. Quantum computers could kick off a new era of growth in computing power. It’s badly needed. The Internet of Things promises to make networks dramatically more complex, requiring entirely new approaches to network management, a task well-suited to quantum technology. Then there’s the explosion of IoT data that will require new approaches to analyzing it all. And organizations that are searching for new efficiencies and revenue in the quest for digital transformation will find that quantum opens up vast new opportunities. Does that mean it’s time to hang a “for sale” sign on those Intel servers? Not yet, if ever. People on the front lines of quantum computer development say users can expect to see tangible benefits within the next few years, but the vaunted machines that can crack 256-bit encryption codes in seconds are still a decade or more away. D-Wave is the only company that’s currently shipping a commercial quantum computer, and experts dispute whether its technology is actually “true” quantum. IBM, Google and Microsoft Corp. are among the big players that have established their own initiatives, but the market is fragmented, leaderless and still squabbling over architectural details. But it’s not too early to start thinking about the problems that quantum technology could tackle: tasks of exponential complexity such as optimizing transportation routes, mapping molecular interactions, optimizing stock market portfolios and forecasting the weather. That requires understanding how quantum computing is different. Of bits and qubits The principles of quantum mechanics are so baffling to the average person that experts tend to fall back to describing the computing technology in terms of what it isn’t, which is traditional computing. Mainstream digital computers are based on binary arithmetic, in which numbers are expressed as combinations of ones and zeros. Performing calculations using these bits, or binary digits, is painfully slow, but it has the advantage of lending itself well to transistors, which exist in either an on or an off state. When you throw enough transistors at a problem, they can do that binary arithmetic at blinding speed. That’s how binary digital computers work.
https://siliconangle.com/blog/2017/08/04/quantum-leap-obstacles-remain-revolution-computing-almost/
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